


Together

by Nemonus



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 03:13:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7150733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemonus/pseuds/Nemonus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fierce Exo Warlock finds herself struggling to open up to her mentor after memories of the Dreadnaught disturb her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JenCforCarolina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenCforCarolina/gifts).



“Does it bother you to patrol there?” Auburn asked.  
  
Selene didn't turn around. She was a red tower, practically on fire with newly acquired and jealously hoarded chroma. A melancholia had struck her, Auburn knew, and not the fiery prickliness of her most aggressive aspect, the one she shared with her insular Ghost. This was something else, something more universal. When Eyahn felt like this, she curled up.  
  
When Selene felt like this, she fought.  
  
Selene had paused at the entrance to Auburn’s room, ending what had been a relaxing, almost silent few hours with a sigh that sounded like a harsh, mechanical stutter. Her lights flickered irritation almost too fast for Auburn to follow. Petty irritation, Auburn was pretty sure. She could almost distinguish that signal from the one for deep anger. The lights went out seconds later, leaving the Exo a red tower with a pale blue face.  
  
“Yeah,” Selene said without turning around. “I guess it does.”  
  
Why now? Selene had been sitting for hours, apparently calm. Auburn had thought at times that she had even started the cache-scanning and dumping process that was the closest Exos got to sleep. What a peaceful group it had been, Auburn sitting on the floor while Eyahn and Selene dozed on the room’s single chair and Auburn’s bed respectively. She could see now that something had been welling up in Selene, though. Auburn’s heart went out to her.  
  
Selene had just gotten back from the Dreadnaught.  
  
Neither of them had been on the Dreadnaught often since it had been opened up for patrol, and Auburn still wasn’t sure why Selene had gone there recently. She would not pry into whether Ikora had assigned Selene a task, or whether Selene had gone to throw herself against the Court, or something else; maybe it would come up in their conversation and maybe it would not.  
  
Auburn wanted to try something, though, against an obvious display of distress. “Anything you want to talk about?”  
  
Selene remained silent, her wide shoulders straight and stiff. Auburn moved her fingers as if knitting. She had a project to work on, a cloak for Eyahn. It would do her good to watch the rows form, to see repetitive movement slowly create the fabric.  
  
Behind her, Eyahn rustled from under a blanket on the room’s single chair, turning over in contentment as she tried out the game of replicating human sleep. What had come to Selene while she dreamed?  
  
Maybe, Auburn thought, she just needed to be handled gently, and left alone.  


* * *

  
  
Selene wished she could process her words in an order that made sense.  
  
She fixed her eyes on the white crease between the wall and the floor on the opposite side of the hallway, and tried to concentrate. She hated turning her back to Auburn. If she hadn’t been so easy to read, she wouldn’t have had to worry about this conversation - but one of Auburn’s powers was the ability to read people, and Selene trusted it. (Selene could also have been a lot less subtle, she knew. She wouldn’t scream at Auburn … most of the time.)  
  
“Would you prefer to talk to another Warlock?” Auburn said gently. The suggestion knocked something loose in Selene’s tense thoughts.  
  
“I don't think so.” Selene hunched her shoulders. “I don’t need to put it in as many words as they do. But there's something …”  
  
She trailed off, struggling with the words again. Selene was comfortable with chaos; especially since embracing her Stormcaller abilities, she had been more able to ride with it, accepting the up-and-down variables like she accepted the warmth of her own servos. There was something … _knowing_ , about what she might otherwise describe as the swarming chaos of the Dreadnaught, though. It wasn’t random. It was _secretive_.  
  
That was the part that rankled.  
  
Selene turned around. She had been avoiding meeting Auburn’s eyes, afraid that there would be something there that would overload her, something too alien. Once she did catch her mentor’s gaze, though, the words seemed to relax her as she vocalized them.  
  
“Ikora mentioned that the Dreadnaught wants us to fight. That the energy of the Hive flows through there. I expected the hordes, the chains. I didn’t expect to be so … _antsy_ ,” Selene said. She mimed a punch at her mentor's shoulder. Once, the gesture would have been too aggressive to be polite between them; now, their relationship could weather it. “Maybe I should blow off steam in the Cosmodrome.”  
  
“Always a good alternative,” Auburn said. “But I think you’re right about the Dreadnaught. There's something … deeply wrong there.”  
  
“There is. And it isn’t just the Hive, though, don’t you think? They’re the … conduit for the wrongness, sure, but the Cabal are doing the exact same thing the Hive are. They’re both shooting at us.”  
  
“I think you’re right. There’s something that makes them different from the Cabal, or even the Vex, or the Taken,” Auburn said. Selene saw Auburn glance down for a fraction of a second when she mentioned the Vex.  
  
“I don’t like not knowing what it is,” the Exo said. “I know some of the theories, but none of them feel right. There are people who go looking for secrets in the Dreadnaught every day … but I can’t help but feel like we just aren’t supposed to be there.”  
  
Auburn nodded. Selene felt her own desire to fight fade away; whatever it was she had wanted to hit, it had moved out of her sight. Whatever it was that had slowly been building up as she sat on Auburn’s comfortable bed thinking about the comfortable tick of Auburn’s knitting needles had finally overflowed and evaporated away.  
  
“The Darkness there preys on a lot of different fears,” Auburn said. “Those of individual Guardians, those of the strange things that live in the Dreadnaught’s walls, those of the Traveler itself. The Darkness is not easy to face, especially not in a form as undiluted as that.”  
  
She could have said so many things, Selene thought. Auburn could have given advice or warnings or admonitions, but somehow, she usually said the right thing. “I was clearing old files,” she said, suddenly certain that those files - those dreams - were the source of her sour mood. Realizing that was like solving a puzzle. “They’re … I think you’d call it subconscious? After I dump them I won’t dwell on them as much. But right now … they were just replaying. Thank you for putting them in perspective.”  
  
Was there a brightness, or a wetness, in Auburn’s eyes? Human expressions were so subtle; Selene wasn’t always sure she had mastered reading them.  
  
The Titan said, “Next time, we’ll go together.”  
  
All three of them? Eyahn’s bright singing would echo off the glistening walls. With Auburn at her back, Selene would be able to devote more processing power to compartmentalizing away the input that disturbed her - the Darkness lapping against the Void like an oily sea.  
  
Auburn reached out and put her arms around Selene’s shoulders. What Selene had expected to be a materteral hug turned out to be a hearty Titan back-slap that made Selene’s collision warnings jump toward the red. Selene embraced her mentor in return, and looked over her shoulder to see Eyahn smile a moment before pulling the woven blanket over her face.  
  
Selene said, “Together.”


End file.
